Does the United States Need a Climate Refugee Policy? April 25, 2019.

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People displaced by extreme weather events and slower-developing environmental disasters are often called “climate refugees.” The term “refugee,” however, has a very precise meaning in US and international law and that definition limits those who can be admitted as refugees and asylees. Calling someone a “refugee” does not mean that they will be legally recognized as such and offered humanitarian protection. More

More: Energy History and Energy Futures. April 10, 2019.

​If nuclear power is to be used as a stop-gap or transitional technology for the de-carbonization of industrial economies, what comes next? Energy history could offer new ways of imagining different energy futures, but current scholarship offers linear narratives of growth toward the development of high-energy economies, leaving little room to imagine low-energy futures. More

The Nuclear Renaissance in a World of Nuclear Apartheid. March 27, 2019. 

Nuclear power is back, riding on growing fears of catastrophic climate change. The climate crisis has rekindled heated debate over the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power. However, advocates and opponents alike tend to overlook or downplay a unique risk that sets atomic energy apart from all other energy sources: proliferation of nuclear weapons. More

​The Cold War Constraints on the Nuclear Energy Option. March 13, 2019. 

Shortly before uranium miner Gus Frobel died of lung cancer in 1978 he said, “This is reality. If we want energy, coal or uranium, lives will be lost. And I think society wants energy and they will find men willing to go into coal or uranium.” Frobel understood that governments had crunched the numbers. They had calculated how many miners died comparatively in coal and uranium production to produce energy. More

Only Dramatic Reductions in Energy Use Will Save The World From Climate Catastrophe. March 1, 2019. 

There is no longer any debate. Humanity sits at the precipice of catastrophic climate change caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Recent reports provide clear assessments: to limit global warming to 1.5ºC above historic levels, thereby avoiding the most harmful consequences, governments, communities, and individuals around the world must take immediate steps to decarbonize their societies and economies. More

Did Colonialism Cause Global Cooling? Revisiting an Old Controversy. February 22, 2019. 

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Roughly 11,000 years ago, rising sea levels submerged Beringia, the vast land bridge that once connected the Old and New Worlds. Vikings and perhaps Polynesians briefly established a foothold in the Americas, but it was the voyage of Columbus in 1492 that firmly restored the ancient link between the world’s hemispheres. Plants, animals, and pathogens – the microscopic agents of disease – never before seen in the Americas now arrived in the very heart of the western hemisphere. More

Next Generation Nuclear? February 13, 2019. 

Climate change is here to stay. So too for the next several millennia is radioactive fallout from nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. Earthlings will also live with radioactive products from the production and testing of nuclear weapons. The question as to whether next generation nuclear power plants will be “perfectly safe” appears to decline in importance as we consider the catastrophic outcome of climate change. More

Closing Nuclear Plants Will Increase Climate Risks. January 30, 2019. ​

On March 28, 1979, I woke up late and rushed to catch the bus to my suburban high school in Rockville MD. So it wasn't until I found my friends clustered around the radio in the cafeteria that I learned seventy-seven miles upwind of us, Three Mile Island Reactor Unit 2 was in partial meltdown. ​​More

Environmental Historians Debate: Can Nuclear Power Solve Climate Change? January 29, 2019. ​

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This series focuses on what environmental and energy historians can bring to discussions about nuclear power. It is a tripartite effort between Active History, the Climate History Network (CHN), and the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE), and will be cross-posted across all three platforms. The series is co-edited by a member of each of those websites: professors Jim Clifford, Dagomar Degroot, and Daniel Macfarlane. More

Reconstructing Africa's Climate: Solving the Riddle of Rainfall. November 16, 2018. 

To grasp the significance of global warming, and to confirm its connection to human activity, you have to know how climate has changed in the past. Scholars of past climate change know that understanding how climate has varied over historical timescales requires access to robust long-term datasets. This is not a problem for regions such as Europe and North America, which have a centuries-long tradition of recording weather with instruments. More

Two Decades from Disaster? The IPCC's "Global Warming of 1.5° C." October 11, 2018.

​International climate change agreements have long aimed at limiting anthropogenic global warming to 2°C Celsius, relative to so-called “pre-industrial” averages. Yet in early 2015, more than 70 scientists contributed to a report that warned about then-poorly understood dangers of warming short of 2° C. Several months later, Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) met in Paris and reached an agreement to keep global warming to “well below” 2° C. The Paris Agreement invited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to prepare a special Assessment Report. More

Is There a Better Way To Do Climate History? Testing a Quantitative Approach. August 31, 2018.

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​Until recently, it was notoriously difficult to connect today’s extreme weather with the gradual trends of climate change. Scientists shied away from saying, for example, that catastrophic droughts or severe hurricanes reflected the influence of anthropogenic global warming. More

Are Woodland Caribou Doomed by Climate Change? July 26, 2018. 

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​In May 2018, woodland caribou were declared functionally extinct in the United States.  Across the Canadian north, woodland caribou have disappeared from roughly half their 19th century range. Is climate change dooming woodland caribou? Or are managers using climate change as an excuse to avoid making difficult policy decisions? More

A Conversation with Dr. Dagomar Degroot: Resilience and Adaptation in the Little Ice Age. June 15, 2018.

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In the eighth episode of the Climate History Podcast, PhD candidate Robynne Mellor (Georgetown University) interviews Dr. Dagomar Degroot, director of HistoricalClimatology.com, about his new book: The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720. Dr. Degroot is an assistant professor of environmental history at Georgetown University, where his research focuses on societal adaptation and resilience to climate change, and the environmental history of outer space. More
Best of the Web:
May 2019

History for the Future? What the Past Reveals About the Warming Arctic. White Horse Press

Did a Volcanic Eruption in 1783 Change the Climate in Europe? Eos

Did European Colonisation Precipitate the Little Ice Age? Aeon

Unraveling the History of El Niño Flavours. Nature Ecology & Evolution

The Chronicles of the Rings: What Trees Tell Us. New York Times

Why Century-Old Ship Logs are Key to Today’s Climate Research. The Verge    

Climate History Newsletters:
Quarterly Updates

Volume 5, Issue 1 (2019):
Weighing nuclear power as a solution to climate change, depopulation and the Little Ice Age.

Volume 4, Issue 3 (2018):
Chinese climate history, whaling and past climate, and a new handbook for university students.

Volume 4, Issue 2 (2018):
A new climate history of Australia, reconstructions of Crimean and Indian climates, and the Tipping Points Project.

Volume 4, Issue 1 (2018):
A new climate history working group, the Sun's impact on climate, and cold golden ages.

Volume 3, Issue 3 (2017):
Famines, volcanoes and ancient violence, and the frigid conquest of North America.

Volume 3, Issue 2 (2017):
Disaster memories, climate and conflict, and controlling nature.

Volume 3, Issue 1 (2017):
Trump's election, medieval climate history, new awards and conferences.

Volume 2, Issue 4 (2016):
PAGES, the IPCC, and Frankenstein's monster.

Volume 2, Issue 3 (2016):
Volcanoes, droughts, and the Maunder Minimum.

Volume 2, Issue 2 (2016):
The Spanish Empire and global cooling, annual meeting at the ASEH conference.

Volume 2, Issue 1 (2016):
New financial support and the Old World Drought Atlas.    

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